Jun 16 Two broken(?) thumbs

Do you ever feel like half of parenting is deciding whether a child's injury/sickness is serious enough to take them to the doctor or not? I do. And there are times when I've gotten it wrong - Magdalena suffered through a broken arm for a day before we got her to the doctor (though the fact that we were on the road in Germany was a mitigating factor, as well as the fact that Magdalena has a freakishly high pain tolerance). But there are plenty of times I've gotten it right, and patted myself on the back when the fever comes down or the vomiting stops or whatever, no doctor visit needed.

Well, in the past week, I've had to decide whether or not to take a kid to the doctor to check out an oddly specific injury (possible broken thumb) not once but twice. First was last weekend when Magdalena did something weird on the monkey bars and then had a swollen, immovable thumb. We waited a few days and it was still swollen and painful, so I took her in to the doctor. Then of course it turned out to be nothing (which they determined in part by testing her blood for signs of inlammation, cool!).

Then on Thursday, Sterling pinched/crushed his thumb in the rug-beating rack in our neighborhood. We almost took him in that night since it looked pretty bad - a purple thumbnail and some bleeding and swelling - but decided to wait until morning and see what it looked like. It was still iffy the next day and then this morning it looked even worse, so we took him in. An x-ray showed a fracture, but in the topmost bone of the thumb (under the nail) where you can't really do anything anyway. Now we're just watching it to make sure it doesn't get infected.

So it's hard to make these calls as a parent sometimes. At least here in Finland with our socialized medicine, cost is not a factor in the decision at all. In the US on a Saturday, wondering whether to bring Sterling in, I would have had to weigh a $500 ER co-pay (or similar) in the balance. Here in Finland, normal medical care for children is free. (And FYI, for an adult, such a visit to the ER would cost 36 euros).